Thomas D. Elias

Recent articles

Columns

All through his career, unpredictability has been the hallmark of Gov. Jerry Brown, and he did it again by choosing 12-term Democratic Rep. Xavier Becerra of Los Angeles as California’s next attorney general.With his confirmation by a Democratic-controlled Legislature certain, Becerra will force other major politicians to look over their shoulders; some are likely to change their longstanding plans. He also moves the state beyond an era of substantial domination by a clique of...

Columns

“The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states,” Barack Obama famously observed in 2004, several years before he ran for president. “But I’ve got news for them: There’s the United States of America.”Twelve years later, Obama is about to depart the White House, and by now he has probably learned there are significant differences between so-called “red” states that tend to vote Republican in...

Columns

If you voted this fall in a neighborhood garage or the clubhouse of a park or a school auditorium, remember the experience well. It may not be repeated anytime soon. If you saw American flags flying at your precinct polling place, that sight may also disappear.A whole new election system is about to begin in California, complete with “vote centers” and a big expansion of early balloting. The new system will start phasing in 2018 in 14 counties and should be operative by...

Columns

In the hullabaloo over Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s surprise election victory, it was easy to miss the fact that in the preliminary vote count, the winner was Democrat Hillary Clinton — by a margin of over 600,000 votes.Her plurality came mostly from California, where Clinton won by more than 2.7 million votes — exponentially more than the leads Trump eked out in places like Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, combined.It quickly...

Columns

You’re sitting in a traffic jam on one of California’s busiest freeways — perhaps the 5 Freeway in northern San Diego County or the 10 Freeway in Los Angeles or the U.S. 101 Bayshore Freeway south of San Francisco — listening to classical music to calm jangled nerves or just thinking. Maybe you’re not stopped, but merely crawling along in a slow-and-go.Suddenly you hear an ear-splitting roar from behind and a motorcycle rips past with leather-clad...

Columns

Even in the midst of the heated presidential campaign, two news stories about alleged corruption in California government managed to draw significant headlines and public attention.One came when the state auditor issued a call for significant changes in procedures at the Public Utilities Commission, which sets rates for almost all electricity and natural gas used in California, routinely deciding billion-dollar issues. Changes similar to what the auditor recommended passed the state...

Columns

Disgust with politics has come easily this fall, given a pair of flawed, often less than truthful major party presidential candidates and a one-party U.S. Senate race that’s been one-sided from the start.Revelations of the lewd, misogynistic remarks by Republican nominee Donald Trump when he thought no one was listening also turned off large numbers of voters.But with ballots already in the hands of many voters and Election Day fast approaching, there are plenty of...

Columns

When cities close down street traffic lanes and paint “experimental” bicycle paths on pavement once used by cars, the so-called experiment almost never fails. The change virtually always becomes permanent.Even in Portland, Ore., where as an “experiment” officials early this year installed small sound-making bumps to let drivers know when they drift into a bike lane and resentful motorists responded by ripping out 70 percent of those bumps, the bumps are...

Columns

A year ago, as the presidential campaign swung into high gear, no one in either major political party — except Donald Trump — took seriously the possibility he might win the Republican nomination for president.Turns out Trump was right; everyone else was wrong. It didn’t matter how much he lied: The fact checking service Politifact finds there’s significant untruth in 84 percent of what Trump says publicly, but he’s expanded his likely voting base...

Columns

Most of the attention this fall has properly gone to the fierce presidential race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Some voters have also given substantial attention to many of the propositions on next month’s ballot, covering everything from plastic bags to condoms in pornography, from taxes to legalized marijuana.All these are important questions, but the proposition that could have the most impact of all on California’s future is largely being ignored.